The other's lips moved, and an unintelligible whisper reached me.
"Ay, that's it, that's it," said the captain, and sent a quick, searching look about the room. "Doubloons—pieces-of-eight—Spanish pillar-dollars—doubloons, doubloons! That is what it would likely be made up of, eh? But where—try to see that—where?"
Another interval of silent gazing, and the
oracle uttered some further statement, which my grandfather received with an impatient groan.
"Doubloons—piles of gold—I know!" he said. "And a ship. But whereabouts was it, eh? Surely you can see whereabouts it was?"
"It's all a mist; I can see nothing," the other answered, after a pause.
I could have found it in me to laugh at the whole miserable hocus-pocus, had I been less indignant. The situation was, besides, sufficiently grave; and as I listened to this silly and profane juggling, and observed the wildness of my grandfather's bearing, it became plain to me that he could not long endure such an influence. I guessed from his talk that the old man's disorder was based upon the idea of treasure lost, sunk, or hidden hereabout; for our coast was dangerous, a menace to vessels, and not innocent, besides, of smugglers and worse. Perhaps the poverty of his later years was at the root of his delusion; perhaps his madness would have taken this form anyhow. However he had fallen into the fat man's hands, this was the secret of the latter's power. While I pondered gloomily, the sitting (so to call it) came to an end. Perhaps my unwelcome appearance somewhat contracted it. My grandfather lapsed into his chair, his chin on his chest, brooding. Excitement died in him almost visibly, like the flickering down of a spent fire. Instead of eighty, he looked a hundred and eighty, and his face was as lifeless as a mummy's.
"Zaira!" said the fat man, raising his thick lids (but I fancied he had already taken some shrewd peeps at me from under them), "I have slept, and the spirit has spoken. Arise! take away the mirror of Time and Space!"
And hereupon the girl, advancing with a shamed glance at me, carried the globe to one of the lockers, shoved it in, and slammed the door on it savagely.
"Have a care!" the seer warned her somberly; the mirror of Time and Space, apparently, was not immune from the ordinary risks of mirrors, as one might have expected so august an instrument to be. When speaking aloud thus, he used a great rolling, sonorous voice; it filled the room until the very window-panes vibrated.